He followed her in, while Perkins, after a lingering glance, closed the door. Jean took a big chair by the fireplace, and for a moment neither spoke. Then she saw the manuscript littering the desk.
“I’m so afraid I’ve interrupted you.”
He shook his head ruefully. “What I was writing, or trying to write, is all the better for being interrupted. And,” he added, “we have been hoping to meet you and your mother.”
Again their eyes met. Derrick noted the smooth oval of her face and the sensitive curve of her lips. Her expression suggested imagination, a mind at once alert and subjective. She was looking now at her father’s portrait, and he saw the resemblance between these two. And, try as he might, he could not guess her thoughts or what brought her there. But something whispered that a Millicent was again in Beech Lodge.
“I did not know I was coming here to-day,” she said gravely, “not till mother and I came past the gates. Then I knew.”
It was all so strange, and yet so utterly real, that Derrick did not answer at once. Here was Millicent’s daughter in Millicent’s study. That to begin with. And there was about the girl a nameless aura she had brought with her that made the ordinary preliminaries of acquaintance seem pointless and out of place. He did not feel that he had always known her, but that somewhere and somehow they possessed something in common.
“Please tell me,” he said quietly.
“Yes, if I may begin by asking questions.”
“It will be very kind of you.”
“Then, did you know about Beech Lodge when you took it?”